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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29427381">the words don't reach</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/morpholomeg/pseuds/morpholomeg'>morpholomeg</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, because what happened to the Doctor as a child was HORRIFIC, warnings for mentions of child abuse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 13:26:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,103</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29427381</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/morpholomeg/pseuds/morpholomeg</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They don’t sit down and talk about it. Yaz is from Yorkshire; the Doctor is ancient. Neither of them really do deep heartfelt conversations.</p><p>Instead, their stories come out in splinters.</p><p>(or: reaction to the revelations from The Timeless Children and Revolution of the Daleks)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Thirteenth Doctor &amp; Yasmin Khan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the words don't reach</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>They don’t sit down and talk about it. Yaz is from Yorkshire; the Doctor is ancient. Neither of them really do deep heartfelt conversations.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead, their stories come out in splinters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Such as:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We will keep you here for ten of your Earth years,” threatens one alien race, on a day that must end in a ‘y’.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ha! Was inside for over thirty last time, you need to up your game!” the Doctor shouts back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yaz has already managed to slip her handcuffs, designed for creatures with an extra three thumbs, and just says “Are you coming or what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The post-it notes were so hilariously wrong.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not Yaz’s fault. She’s a human who tried to teach herself to pilot a TARDIS solo in ten months, when Time Lords had dedicated tuition for at least twenty years before being allowed to join a team of six. Still, the Doctor makes a point now of throwing out information:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gravity helm,” she says, spinning a dial. “Atmospheric integrator,” flicking a switch. “GPS - pings for other satellites,” tapping a screen.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s all in your language,” Yaz complains.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wouldn’t make sense in yours,” says the Doctor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re paying,” Yaz tells the Doctor, the next time they’ve stopped in for a fried egg sandwich on Earth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not the one with a salary,” the Doctor protests.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Yaz is unimpressed. “Neither am I,” she rebuts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the end, the Doctor sonics the contactless card machine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Time Lord,” hisses a Dalek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Funny story that, not so much,” says the Doctor. “Nameless, unclassified orphan doesn’t really have the same ring though, does it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And that’s the first time that Yaz looks like she wants to demand an explanation, but she’s six miles away, watching on CCTV, and the Doctor has no idea that she has heard. When they meet again, some four hours later, Yaz does not bring it up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Najia would not approve,” the Doctor says, when Yaz accidentally gets high on a substance that really did look and taste just like regular cherries.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yaz’s voice is lower, slower than normal when she says: “Haven’t spoken to her in months, she doesn’t need t’know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Doctor is taking her pulse, fingers pressed firmly to the inside of her wrist. She loses count, and starts again. “What about Sonya? Or - or - ”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“S’alright,” says Yaz. “Course you don’t remember my dad’s name. Anyway, they think I’m still with you. They thought I was with you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They know you!” Yaz pants as they round a corner at breakneck speed. “You must have met them!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, well, might be during one of those lives I don’t remember!” the Doctor says. “Ooh, moped!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She leaps on and Yaz follows her without hesitation, clutching her around her waist. “I just hope you remember how to drive!” she says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re running for their lives - what’s new? - but the gas is thick and stifling. Every sound is muffled and deadened; the light is so dim that Yaz can barely see her own feet below her, let alone the Doctor, less than a metre away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This planet is empty, eerie, or so it feels to Yaz. There are no other solid lifeforms, just gaseous entities, and Yaz’s every sense is straining out for the Doctor. Her whole body pines for her, for the sound of her, the sight, smell, solidity of her. The Doctor is only inches away, but she feels absent, absented forcefully from her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then, suddenly, their hands collide. They’re sprinting, arms pumping, feet slamming into the ground; their fists knock into each other again, twice, three times, knuckles knocking against each other painfully; they open their hands; their fingers catch again, but this time they grasp, connect, hold.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Doctor stumbles but, hand in hand, they continue.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s one of those cases where it’s not brains or bravery or brawn that’s going to win the day: it’s connecting with a child.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This morning they arrived on Shiak, a small moon covered in forests. The trees look like pine, almost, and the dominant species is the Tanig, which resembles nothing so much as a polecat the size of a particularly large Alsatian. It’s been a difficult day for Yaz and the Doctor: the dens they are invited to enter are not built for bipeds, and they’ve been forced to get down on their hands and knees and crawl a lot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The other problem for Yaz is that Tanigs have not evolved the vocal cords needed for sophisticated language. Instead, they communicate by telepathy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Temporary solution!” the Doctor announced cheerily before they left the TARDIS. “Telepathic boosters.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yaz has one of these on now, curled around her left ear like a hearing aid. The Doctor has its pair curled around her right.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a two-way thing,” she had explained when she handed Yaz the little device. “You still won’t be able to hear the Tanigs directly, but these create a link between me and you so I can sort of interpret. Which does mean that you’re gonna get a few of my thoughts along the way,” she’d said to Yaz as she fitted her own booster behind her right ear. “Sorry about that. I’ll try to keep it light.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And up until now, she has; in the brief moments where the Doctor loses concentration, Yaz has received musings on Tanig architecture and biology, a bit of worry that she might have left an insurrection unattended (which made Yaz’s idle concern about leaving her charger plugged in seem a bit petty), and a truly uncategorisable kaleidoscope of other thoughts, ideas and dreams: flashes of tarte tatin followed by a glimpse of a fantastic planetscape, a snatch of a song Yaz feels like she knows. It takes her by surprise every time, having a thought without thinking it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their challenge today is preventing a disaster. Nothing more specific than that; the Doctor claims that she can feel a sense of impending doom, and coming from a Time Lord that’s nothing to sniff at.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But as the Doctor and Yaz have been wandering around, speaking to any Tanig they came across in the sparsely populated woods, it has been difficult to see what that disaster could possibly be. Shiak is not an industrial planet, there is nothing likely to blow up, no nearby body of water to flood, no government to speak of which could need overthrowing. Even the weather forecast looks mild.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yaz had wondered if they were in the wrong place, but felt the Doctor’s resistance to that idea in her mind. For a moment, she could see as the Doctor did: feel the gnarly knot of timelines almost exactly where they found themselves, perched on the surface of this moon which span like a hurricane, hurtling around its planet, which in turn was careening around -</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then the Doctor drew back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright?” she asked aloud.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yaz blinked a few times. She curled her toes inside her sensible trainers, reassuring herself that she stood firmly on a solid surface. The Doctor in turn felt that recalibration, the resettling of Yaz’s mind, and moved on without waiting for an answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They found the child not long after that, and one of them - Yaz isn’t sure which - realised their error. The disaster they are here to stop is not a mass extinction event, the sinking of the Titanic, the outbreak of a deadly disease. It is the tipping point of a child’s life, the moment where the child starts to believe that she deserves the abuse of her parent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This child, whose name is a telepathic feeling like the fine drizzle by a waterfall, has not had much of a childhood. Her father is absent, already mated with other females, but that in itself is not unusual in this society. Tanig kits are raised by their mothers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yaz understands all of this as the child explains. It’s the way of this sort of telepathy: not words, but experiences. The Doctor isn’t really interpreting, or even repeating; she’s a conduit, letting the stream of conscious thought flow through to Yaz.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Yaz understands that Tanig litters are normally between five and ten kits, but she understands just as well what it feels like when you are the only survivor of seven. When your mother is unable to face what she perceives as her failure to keep the other six alive. When she takes that despair and turns it on you, blaming you for stealing their milk. When she decides as soon as your first teeth have come in that you should go out and hunt; when you fail, too young to catch any real prey. Yaz feels the echoes of pain, sharp nips on her legs, at her neck. Kits normally become independent within months, but Yaz can feel the strain of captivity, of being kept from leaving by the strictures of her mother, but also by her own sense of guilt and duty. This child - she is an adolescent really, and could become a mother herself soon. She has been kept away from other Tanigs, but she still understands instinctively what a mother should feel to her kits, the fierce protectiveness and love and pride that she herself has never received. And because she understands it, Yaz does too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But because of this shared understanding, the way that their species communicate, it has been easy for this young female to feel what her mother does, to feel </span>
  <em>
    <span>as </span>
  </em>
  <span>her mother does. The disaster today is that she is about to believe that she deserves the bites and the scratches, to hunt for two with no thanks, to be alone and unloved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yaz doesn’t know what to do. If this were a human child she encountered at work, she could talk to them and, if necessary, call in social services. She knows roughly what she should say in these circumstances: she should listen to the child, hear their voice, try to give them small but significant choices about what they want to happen next. She should try to keep herself out of the conversation, try not to impose her own thoughts and opinions on the situation, whatever she might think of the individuals involved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That doesn’t work by telepathy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yaz looks helplessly at the Doctor, but she has already taken over. She is ignoring Yaz, totally focused on the Tanig.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And suddenly Yaz feels:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Compassion. I have lived this too. I have been alone, I have been young and lost. I have been used by my mother. I have been mistreated, and hurt, and exploited, by the woman who called herself my mother. I have felt unique and cut off from my fellows. I know beyond all doubt that there is no one who fully understands my experience.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And I know that I am loved. I was alone, and I will be alone again, but right now I’ve got Yaz, and she loves me. You deserve to feel that too, you will feel that too. You will be loved, like I am loved, like Yaz-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yaz takes off her telepathy booster.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The child whose name is the feeling of fine drizzle on your fur when you play by waterfalls is taken from her mother’s den. She chooses to remain in the same general vicinity, territories overlapping, and she says she might still provide for her mother, if she has the energy and the resources to spare. The Doctor lets a few other Tanigs in the area know what has happened, and they agree easily to watch out for the child and her mother, and support them both if they should cross paths.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yaz and the Doctor head back to the TARDIS. Job done. Just another day. The Doctor doesn’t look back at her as she leaps up to the console and starts the dematerialisation sequence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Yaz’s heart is still tight with the love she felt in the Doctor’s mind, the deep, confident assurance of that love. It’s almost paralysing, constricting her lungs and making it difficult for her to catch her breath.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Doctor,” she says. It’s the first time she’s used her voice since leaving the TARDIS, and the word cracks in her throat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Doctor turns away from the console. She still has her own telepathy booster curled behind her ear, but she removes it now and sets it down. She doesn’t smile exactly, but some slight affection touches her mouth, her eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yaz,” she says, simply.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yaz is from Yorkshire; the Doctor is ancient. Neither of them really do deep heartfelt conversations.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yaz reaches out, and takes the Doctor’s hand.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Title and last line (almost) from It's Quiet Uptown by Lin-Manuel Miranda. But you knew that.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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